Devotion : Surrender : Triumph

Devotion : Surrender : Triumph is a project where I attempted to answer the question, “How can we give new meanings to patterns by using them in a new context through a process of deconstruction to reconstruction?” I was particularly interested in exploring the different ways I could transform a two-dimensional drawing and turn it into a three-dimensional object.

STEP 1 : ANALYSISTo get inspired, I spent some time studying various patterns in The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones. I was drawn to a lot of the geometric and flower patterns.

STEP 2 : DECONSTRUCTIONAfter looking at several dozens of patterns, I attempted to dissect out various visual elements that I resonated most with. From there, I created a series of simple visual patterns that I could work with—at this point, I wasn’t sure what I could do with them.

STEP 3 : CONSTRUCTIONUsing the deconstructed elements, I then constructed new forms by stacking them on top of each other. By doing this, I created bigger patterns with lots of intricacies and complexities. I spent a lot of time adjusting certain layers of each pattern to make sure they look good as a series of three.

STEP 4 : LAYER SEPARATIONThe next long tedious step was to do this thing I refer to as “layer separation,” where I manually separate each individual layer for each of the patterns. Think of it as each pattern was being 3D printed, one layer after another.

STEP 5 : ITERATIONOnce I had all of my layers separated, I worked on turning those 2D patterns into 3D objects. I experimented with the laser cutter to cut different kinds of paper and etching on wood.